"Don't know about the Dicky Dirt, Trev"

We have lived outside the UK, well actually England, since 1985 and on occasion some people ask how English I feel and such things like that. Well the answer is a tough one as whilst I still have the same English voice that I have always had, we have lived essentially in a North American environment for nearly 35 years. So I like (a lot) and am used to lots of things that North Americans take for granted. Stuff like driving big cars, pancakes with maple syrup, great steak restaurants, fantastic cocktail bars, big houses, tall ceilings, wide and long parking spaces, yes even tall buildings, but not bacon or sausages I'm afraid. English are still the best there. Chocolate too.

So mixed feelings is I guess the answer.

What about politics? Please don't ask me that! It is only the current Brexit mess that has forced me to even know the names of current British politicians. And armed with that knowledge I now regret even that as I don't think many of them have covered themselves in glory and seem to have succeeded only in ruining a previously very good reputation for a parliamentary system that whilst quirky had stood the test of time and sort of kind of worked. But I do know the American politicians and system reasonably well. Canadian too. All I will say there is that seemingly no leader anywhere is currently giving a great impression of being a statesman. Everyone is too busy taking care of themselves and their re-election prospects even as the (whichever) country is at risk of going to the dogs.

Politics isn't the theme of this blog though, rather it is the question of Englishness. Great word that. The French with all their Academie Francaise hubris don't have a word for it. They'd probably use 7 or 8 words along the lines of 'le coeur et l'âme d'être français' and that still doesn't mean the same thing.

I just returned from England where I watched a couple of Tottenham Hotspur games, one Premier League and the other Champions League, and rediscovered (I did need reminding) what a great city London is. Huge, busy, so many different languages on the street, so many different ethnic restaurants. Even one of those really annoying advertisements you get which end in a voice speaking really fast telling you what the ghastly side effects of this new wonder drug is, was a French girl. Speaking English very fast and with great articulation. Made me really sad to think that this could all go soon.

Some things don't change though.

It was at the first football match which was the first game at the new Tottenham stadium. Great stadium, lots of fanfare, completely inexplicable opening ceremony which had a rapper and a gospel singer duetting something for some reason that eluded me. Great seats, wonderful view, good facilities inside for the fan and the really neat thing that I liked was that whilst it was built along the lines of a US NFL stadium (as it plans to host NFL games too), there is absolutely zero parking. The stadium is right in the middle of Tottenham, so houses and little shops and pubs across the street and all around. The local co-op is just around the corner. Walking out of the train station, the stadium was right there in your face and well so was the rest of Tottenham.  (An aside here: I do hope my reader understands that Tottenham is nowhere near the centre of London. It is 30 minutes by overground from Liverpool Street Station. Miles away in fact. Tottenham Court Road is in central London and I suspect its name reference is pure accident).

It was at the other end that things of course fell apart and sometimes you do wonder. The stadium build overran by 6-7 months and it is clear that the club is hurrying to get it open so at least some games in the 2018/19 season can be played at the new home. I don't want to think that that is a money reason, but it obviously could be. Most things are.

Opening night for the stadium

So the station is half built and on coming out at the end it was clear that nobody had mentioned to the train/tube people (it isn't London Transport any more, it has another name that I don't remember) that around 10 pm over 60,000 people would be coming out of the ground looking for a way to get home. Stuff like this is something I definitely do think the English (OK British. Why just diss the English on this?) do not do well. In the USA/Canada, this would have been thought through and dealt with so that within 30 minutes everyone would be gone. It took ages but as Tottenham won 2-0, all were in good humor.

Great view of the match

Credit where it is due though for by the second game, this had been resolved. Sort of. For someone had hand written a time table of trains heading back into London so that at least we all knew what the situation was even though we still had to wait. And as a subsequent follow up, I just received a notice that the club is now putting on free shuttles from the ground to 4 or 5 different public transport hubs around so at least this issue has been recognized. It would have been better or course to consider this in advance rather than have to scramble around for bandaid solutions.

Now that I have exposed myself as a football fan, I will get to the point. Having returned to Penang I found myself staying up half the night watching Tottenham games and by association other games that have an impact on the final league standings. So I don't know how I ended up watching a West Ham game a few days ago. But I did. These days there's always at least two commentators for every sporting event, the primary one and then the analyst. I missed the names for this game but the analyst was clearly a West Ham fan and potentially an ex-player so the primary commentator spent a lot of time making general clarifying comments for the audience as the analyst was getting quite worked up as it was a really close game.

The camera panned round into the crowd and found a familiar face, someone I immediately recognized as one of the greatest footballers of the time that I was growing up and familiar with when I was living in England, namely Trevor (or rather Sir Trevor) Brooking. The analyst picked up on this fact and waxed lyrical about him before coming up with THE line of the day:

"Oooh, don't know about the Dicky Dirt, Trev".

Now my home town is Southend-on-Sea, only some 20 miles down the road from West Ham and our local patois is not entirely dissimilar to cockney, which was what the analyst was. It is curious for only a couple of days previously I had had dinner in Penang with someone from Streatham in South London and to the untrained ear, the accent is the same. Sort of what is these days called 'Estuary English'. But it isn't. South London is quite different from Estuary and very different from Cockney and indeed my own Essex whine (which I keep only for special occasions and school friends). But I understand them all intuitively so as soon as these words were uttered I almost wet myself laughing.

This would have been fine at any other time but unfortunately I was drinking a cup of tea and my laughing made me ingest the tea which went down the wrong way, sparking a mass of coughing and spluttering, gulping for air, more laughing and culminating in the spectacle of my tea making a reappearance out of my nose. From where it ran down onto my shirt. Sorry Viv!

What made things funnier I think was the realization that I was probably one of only 5 or 6 people in the whole world who actually understood what had been said for this was the Premier League's own feed so it would have not been sold in England, only outside. In England, the Premier League rights are owned by Sky and BT Sport only. It occurred to me then and now that it would be almost impossible for any non-native English speaker to have a clue what had been said. It wasn't rude although I was waiting for the rest of the program for the analyst to make the ruder follow on comment, say, about Trevor Brooking's neighbor, referring to him as a 'friend of Trev' -- which is!

Confused yet?

The Layover... London

Anthony Bourdain's second show (I think) was called 'The Layover'.  It followed the first series called 'No Reservations' which seemed to be a travelogue in which he ate and drank his head off around the world.  Being good with the chatter, it made for entertaining viewing and certainly gave Viv and I ideas for further and slightly off beat travel.  The Layover series was based around the premise that you had 24 or 36 hours in some major city and you needed to cram the entire week's eating and drinking into that compressed time frame.  Hence the title of this post!

I was going to the 4th Ashes Test Match in Nottingham on the Saturday with 11 members of my cricket team, The Associates, but was a day earlier than most of the others so planned to spend it in London.  The London underground had decided to go on strike that evening from 6.30 pm so the mood in London was grisly as everyone knew what a royal pain it would be to get home so most companies decided to let people off early.

When in London I like to stay at the East India Club and here I'll give a little plug to the University Club of Toronto where I am a member and with whom the EIC has a delightful reciprocal arrangement with members in good standing.  Fortunately I'd paid the UCT bill so I was able to stay at the EIC for a very reasonable rate and enjoy their facilities but particularly their breakfast and proximity to Piccadilly, less than 100 yards away.

As the Bermuda flight gets into Gatwick around 7 am it was a stroke of luck that the room I'd booked was available so I was able to get some sleep before stepping out on the town.  The weather was decent too so it would be a day of walking.

I started out with lunch at one of my favourite pubs just off Bond Street called The Guinea, a Youngs pub still happily which used to make the best steak pies in the country.  Certainly they were the best I've ever eaten but as their heyday was in the 1990's when they ruled the roost, the current incarnation whilst it tried hard simply didn't measure up.  Mark on report card: Must try harder.  Actually it should be go back to the old recipe and method.  Back then (in the late 1970's/early 1980's -- gulp!) they made one tray of steak pies that were in round dough balls crammed with steak.  They only made 24 each day so you had to be there early.  These days, there are pies a-plenty probably at all times of the day.  Nice for sure but it does make me wonder about changes that happen today.  At times like this, syrely there was no need to change.  Sometimes I think we make changes largely because we can.  There's some new technology available that we can use to make things quicker and -- here comes the dreaded word -- more efficiently.  So we use it.  It may be not as good but making it is sure more efficient than it was in the past.  Are we really happy to have sacrificed quality for efficiency?

I love walking in London so whilst I had a fully charged Oyster Card I also had plenty of time before I was due to meet my brother Jan and his daughter/my neice Gabs in Shoreditch.  So no need to rush over there so I bumbled.  One of my favourite hobbies.  Up Bond Street past all those designer and fine art shops, some of which I used to audit back in the 1970's/1980's.  They are still there too!  I am sure their prices are higher as whilst the street was jammed it looked like the only buyers were dressed in burkas trailing endless children.

Next was Oxford Street, Oxford Circus, Regent Street -- with enforced stop at the jammed Apple store -- Carnaby Street -- yes, its back and still as tacky looking as ever, but the record store I used to buy bootlegs from has gone of course -- Soho, China Town, Leicester Square -- no movies at the time I was there -- Charing Cross Road -- I couldn't find Foyle's Bookstore but understand that it has moved to Shaftesbury Avenue round the corner; shame it moved, there's no more book shops left on Charing Cross Road -- Covent Garden -- and another necessary pitstop at the amazingly redeveloped Apple Store there -- Holborn Kingsway -- past another hotel that I used to audit with cellars probably 200 feet down which went on for hundreds of yards containing wines back to the Napoleonic era when I was doing the audit -- down to the Strand, turn left at the Aldwych and head toward the Temple Bar announcing the start of the City and of Fleet Street.

I worked on Fleet Street in the middle 1970's with our office next to the Daily Express building when newspapers were actually printed on and around Fleet Street.  Our audit room was on the same level as the editor's office and when one of our new guys told everyone that his dad would likely be in the daily meetings, we of course looked out for him and waved like crazy.  After the first time when his dad called to tear a strip off him, we carried on anyway but they turned out to have worked us out and waved back... so of course that was no fun, so we stopped doing it and got on with our work!  Both buildings are still there happily as is my favourite pub of the time -- the Olde Cheshire Cheese -- which served lovely Marston's Pedigree.

Up Ludgate Hill across Ludgate Circus -- no more Ludgate Cellars regrettably -- past the Old Bailey to St. Paul's Cathedral.  It looked lovely as always.  There is this magnificent photo of London in the blitz with everywhere burning in the middle of which is the dome of St. Paul's.  Still gives me a lump in the throat when I see it.

My office in Paternoster Square -- an ugly building now happily gone and replaced with a vibrant new Churchyard -- was right next to St. Paul's when they were cleaning it probably for the first time in a century.  The method:  hoses.  For a year.  Before it was black and foreboding.  After it was all gleaming stone and magnificence.  Still is.

My office was in the rubble to the left of  St. Paul's from this angle, going up Ludgate Hill.  Not much left after the Luftwaffe had had their say that and many other nights.

I was sad to find that the City Pipe, another favourite haunt of mine, had been redeveloped but it was only a short stroll along Cheapside until you reach the Bank of England, Mansion House and the Royal Exchange.  Always bustling, I just love the City and about this time I started to fantasize about getting a job in the City to wind out my working days. I think I'll get over that though!

Next stop was to move along Broad Street until you reach Bishopsgate and then turn leftish towards Liverpool Street Station.  Years ago, this was much smaller.  These days it seems a monstrous sea of glass and impressive red brick.  Where did that red brick come from?  Also the usual hordes of bars and restaurants.  I am amazed about the number there are. How can they all survive?  There used to be the Great Eastern and across the street Dirty Dicks -- a real underground dive cum hovel if ever there was.  Very trendy nowadays, you can even have office functions there.  In my day, you'd never admit you frequented Dirty Dicks! -- but that was about it.

From the station, it was just a short further walk up Bishopsgate to Shoreditch.  Under the railway, first right, first left and there you are at #7 Boundary Street, the home of Dishoom, a Bombay Cafe and venue for tonight's knees up with Jan and Gabs.

Very nice place too with a lovely verandah area (summer only of course) that just begged to be sat in with cool drinks and interesting nibbles coming along to join in.  Whilst waiting, I just had to have a Limca Tom Collins -- Limca is an Indian lemonade that contains no lemon apparently yet tastes like it and is quite possibly the sweetest beverage you will ever consume.

One of the world's most sugary beverages

Then came the crowds, and the lines and more crowds and more lines.  Quite amazing but not hard to understand why as the food was terrific and when one swapped to alternative cocktails, so were they.  The atmosphere was jumping and in all we had a simply lovely evening.

The basic premise with Dishoom is that of a Bombay Cafe run by Iranians (or Farsi's in India).  The menu was just like it sounded when my mum and dad told me of the clubs they'd go to for lunch and dinner with all the little accompaniments to curries that make it such an enjoyable eating experience.

And drinking too for who wouldn't want to go to a prohibition busting bar?  Called the Permit Room because of the prohibition that exists (then and now) in Bombay meaning you had to go to a special room for those pre-independence cocktails that you love.  It's their bar.

Great time and great layover!

On the road again...

OK it wasn't a big road trip but it certainly felt like quite a bit of driving.  Maybe its England and the size of the roads.  In the US when you drive, it seems there are acres of room to do everything.  In England things seem to be much closer together.  Certainly cars have got bigger over time, this is a global phenomenon not necessarily a UK one but on UK roads, it stands out more.

This time though we figured we needed a big car capable of holding 7 people and their luggage for the to-ing and fro-ing we had planned and from the usual Kayak search, out came Sixt (see link here).

Who, you may ask?  They are a German firm that is expanding globally.  We'd hired a car from them in Miami once -- what, you ask?  Why didn't you use Silvercar?  The best car hire firm bar none.  Well, they hadn't opened up in Miami at that point but they have now, so I will be headed in their direction for any further times.  But Sixt are expanding in the UK whilst Silvercar is not (yet) -- they just opened in Chicago so are getting a little nearer.  And they were fantastic too.  Sixt, I mean.  Very helpful and polite both in and out and the vehicle they rented us was just terrific too.

It was a VW (of course) 9-seater.  And it was great to drive... once you got the hang of its length.  It was knocked about a bit at each front sides and trying to get out of the car park at the airport, nearly took out a couple of posts people put up to stop drivers trying to cut corners!  But I did manage to not add to the scrapes.

So the rental was another great experience.  Now I know of 2 great car hire firms: first Silvercar, second Sixt.  The rest are nowhere by comparison.  Sorry guys!

I already posted about Dover Castle but want to add something about the A2 as it passes through the Blackheath.

I've driven this road dozens of times over the years always going to or from London.  It's not a quick route past here as the traffic build up gets pretty heavy and have never turned either left or right at the lights in the middle of the heath.  I've never had reason to.  On the right is residential, on the left is a long wall (heading towards London this is).  The reason I mention it is that before eating lunch in Greenwich we took a brief detour (courtesy of duelling GPS' gone mad -- at that time we were working off our Garmin and Indy's iPhone using the Google Maps App) that wasn't altogether under control. Looking for the O2 Arena, the machines directed us along ever narrower streets until we came out into the open... and hit the traffic lights in the middle of this heath!  But along the way, we had also passed signs for Greenwich Park and the Royal Observatory so thought that we should turn around and take a look.

Docklands in the middle, the City to the left and the Millenium Dome, now O2 Arena to the right.  In the foreground the magnificent maritime museum.  This is where the horse trials were held in the 2012 Olympics!  Who could do this in an hour?  It would take a week at least to simply scratch the surface...

It turned out to be behind this long wall bounding the edge of Blackheath that I'd driven past dozens of times over the years without realizing.

We weren't able to spend too much time as lunch beckoned in an hour or so but it looks a magical place that I want to return to and spend a day in!

If you beat me, do please tell me about it.  I want to stand on the Meridian, one leg either side!!

The 24-hour clock was right!

Food, food and more food

When you go to a Chinese banquet there are certain definites:

1) 10 courses -- and not nouvelle cuisine courses either.  These are substantial!

2) Soup at some point, maybe shark fin or bird's nest although these days shark fin is something of an endangered species dish.  Maybe not endangered but the thought of sharks swimming around without a dorsal fin isn't that popular these days.

3) Long life noodles to finish -- a certain kind of veggie noodles that are deep fried and insanely good and which finish off the banquet, just when you most need it!

The event was Viv's mum Anna's 80th birthday party and was held at the China Boulevard restaurant in the newly gentrified Wandsworth, in the midst of new flats by the Thames just next to Wandsworth Bridge and the Ship pub if you want some precise instructions on how to get there. It was really good so going back wouldn't be a hardship!

The guests were from Anna's life and was a nice chance to have Indy, Ali and Anton in the same room at the same time of course along with Viv and I.  Most others were Anna's co-travelers and MJ victims but there were some people from the old Hong Kong days too.  So a nice bunch to catch up with.  Particularly nice was seeing Farida and Pervez after 20 years or so (according to Pervez who droned on and on about this so he's probably right).  Farida was Viv's school friend and had been matron of honour at our wedding and we'd been on holiday with them pre-children too so it was lovely to see them again and reflect how easy it is to lose contact and the time just slips by...

In the days before selfies...

But the food just kept on coming!

The lobster course

And the event just kept on going too for as soon as the food ended, impromptu MJ tables sprung up whilst the rest of us just kept on chatting and partying.  At 9 or 10 pm more food came out for a late night snack before calling it quits.  I annoyingly didn't pick up a copy of the menu but remember a wonderful steamed fish playing quite a part in the late night proceedings.

And to prove we could, on the way back we stopped off at Anna's favourite restaurant in Greenwich for lots and lots of dim sum!

I felt like a roly poly pudding at the end of it all!

Dining in the Dark

In retrospect, the recent London trip was much about eating.

Immediately on our return from oop north, Alex had distinct ideas about what he wanted to eat and the location -- the much gentrified Shoreditch area.  I remember Shoreditch as being very much the poor relation to the City nearby and in fact much of the area was either bomb sites or those revolting buildings slapped up in the 1950's and 1960's.  Well that's all changed as the artsy set has moved in and gentrified the place to shabby chic levels, higher property prices and much, much better restaurants and bars.

Alex chose the Viet Grill (see website here) where we ate up a storm clearly needing some Vietnamese comfort food in the shape of their pho (aka noodles).  Really nice too after which we all split up as I wanted to go for a stroll through the City whilst the young uns wanted to rest before that night's birthday party for Ali which would be held in Brixton Market.

Brixton Market through the years

Things have changed a lot since I last worked in the City nearly 30 years ago.  Wild horses wouldn't have dragged me to Shoreditch or Brixton.  Then the former was a dump whilst the latter was a place people didn't return from.  Gentrification has changed everything and whilst the bones of the City were still there, I was keen to stroll down memory lane to see if I actually could recognise some of my old haunts.

How the City has changed too.

It still has the same character that it always had I think because the City like most places in England grew simply by adding on bits to what was there before.  There was nothing planned.  So you have tall buildings, small buildings and little lanes cheek by jowl with the new glass monstrosity high rises.  It all makes for a very interesting labyrinth which it took me years to learn years ago and which sadly meant I had to keep to the main thoroughfares this time so as not to get lost.  By contrast US cities are mainly planned with the big blocks dominating so there are fewer labyrinthine walkways to discover.

Anyway Dirty Dicks opposite Liverpool Street station is still there -- it used to be scraggy but now I am sure it has gone up market like everything else.

Bishopsgate is unrecognizable now with many of the little lanes and low buildings replaced by big roads and even bigger buildings!  But it was pleasant to stroll through the City during rush hour… for a while until I got sick of the deluge of people and the rain, and caught the tube back to my lodging.

We'd arranged to meet at Brixton Market at 8 pm and I wanted to be early as Jan's daughter Gabby would be joining us and I suspected the lads may be late (they were).  As it happened I met her just outside Brixton tube station so we walked into the market together.

Brixton has also been gentrified… or rather it is in an earlier stage of gentrification than Shoreditch, but you can see it happening.  Gabby and the London based friends of Alex and Ali were all devotees of the area, but it still has a bit of an edge to it.  Mind you the assembly point was a hamburger restaurant which next door had a champagne and cheese bar.  Further into the market was a Roti stand so all ethnicities appeared to be covered.

Ali and the Champagne Bar

The following day I went down to Canterbury to see my mother-in-law Anna on the train.  Not as easy as it should have been as the heavy rains had washed away part of the fast railway that connects to the Channel Tunnel.  This meant the stopping train which in the end was both reasonable cost and fast enough, not quite 90 minutes.  Mind you it rained cats and dogs throughout which actually wasn't bad at all as I enjoyed strolling along the City walls into the City centre -- something I haven't done enough.

1,000 year old City walls

1,000 years of history in this City but now it was very, very wet.  Even the usually low River Stour is right up to its highs -- the story of the entire country at the moment.

The highlight was that evening's big adventure -- namely dining in the dark with Gabby at Dans Le Noir (see website here), a restaurant on the fringes of the City.  This what the website says:

"You are about to live an unbelievable experience: eating and drinking in the pitch darkness.
This idea might seem a little strange at first, but by suppressing the dominant sense of sight, you will enter a world in which one is uncertain of surroundings and experiences.

"With the help of our blind guides you are going to completely re-evaluate the notions of taste and smell through our gastronomic and pedagogical process.

"Our food, mostly organic, is based on first quality ingredients, making this experience as interesting and tasty as possible. Just choose one of our 4 surprise menus.

"Dans le Noir? London is located in the charming Clerkenwell area, on 30-31 Clerkenwell Green, near Holborn and Farringdon, a few minutes walk from the heart of the city: the restaurant can accommodate approximately sixty people in the “dark room”, the main dining area. It also has a lit bar and a private lounge serving fine wines and delicious specialty cocktails before and after a meal."

This was an amazing experience although there are several practical considerations to get over: first is the total darkness.  And I do mean the total darkness.  Wave your hands in front of your eyes and you can usually see a flicker.  Not in that restaurant though.  Very eerie.  Second is the food.  As you cannot see a thing, it is almost as though you are eating with a spoon as you cannot find the food on your plate in the usual way.  Makes fine food almost irrelevant.  Third is the company.  You cannot see them!  There are people to left and right and the noise level is pretty high -- one of our neighbours talked endlessly about fell diseases throughout.  But overall I had a great time with Gabby!

I think I put on 10 pounds!

It's like this, Guys…

The guy I sat next to on the flight from Bermuda to Toronto said "last week it was minus 33 in Toronto".  I couldn't work out what that meant in terms of fahrenheit (which I understand) but I do know that that's really, really cold… fortunately I wasn't staying in TO for long this time, I was heading for London but would stay once the Arctic Vortex had receded in a week or so.  This week was all about football and in particular Manchester City.

Now I'm not a particular fan of City although I do enjoy football.  My team is Southend United -- the Blues not the Shrimpers, as some call them -- who hold up the lower echelons of the football league very well indeed.  After all they've had plenty of practice.  However my sons, Alex and Ali, are big fans due of course to the Bermuda connection with ex-City superhero Shaun Goater.  They attended his summer football camps in Bermuda for many years and found him (as have many others) to be a real gentleman, an inspiration and one heck of a role model.  Not overly talented, Goater's big plus was a work ethic of unbelievable depth and being a true team man.

The 'Goat'

The game though was huge.  This was City's first really big Champions League match ever, having made it out of the group stages for the first time.  For a team that spent that much, this really isn't that great an achievement.  They should have done it sooner.  But at least they did this time and this round of 16 game was a knock out against the might of Barcelona.  Not an easy task by any means.  Also they'd lost the week before in rather disappointing fashion and I was hoping they'd have the cojones to pick themselves up and earn their £200,000 a week.

Big issue was how to get tickets as this promised to be a well supported game. Alex had joined the City supporters club thinking it would be the way but the club only offered him one ticket!  So the fall back was a package tour including train there and back, accomodation and ticket for … gulp … a lot more than the face value of £28.  Mind you it was the experience that counted, not that aspect of things.  I'd even convinced my brother Jan to join us for the event!  That was a tough one as he doesn't much like football in the first place!!

I was lucky enough to land at Heathrow so I could take the Tube into central London directly thanks to my Oyster Card.  No hassle, less than an hour to Green Park which was only 5 minutes walk from where I was staying.

But what a city London is!

Such a mixture of sounds, tongues, smells and what a wonderful vibe.  Last time I was here a year or so back you could tell the economy was damaged.  That's completely gone.  The city is rocking!

But my goodness, how expensive it is.  From a simple cuppa to a nice apartment in central London, this is one hell of a pricy town.  No wonder fewer than 50% of the inhabitants are native Londoners!  I read in a paper that Malta was selling citizenship for $1 million enabling people access to the EU and more importantly London property.  These were from people in politically challenged locations such as Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela in South America, Kazakhstan and other central Asian locations too.  Presumably Ukraine and Russia too given the uproar in that region currently. Add the Chinese flocking in and this promises to keep London property prices moving strongly upward.

The plan was to meet at Euston on the day of the game -- Tuesday 18th February -- and head up together, all 6 of us.  That gave me time to go the theatre the night before, the Duke of York to be precise where I saw Jeeves & Wooster being a big PG Wodehouse fan.

Just wonderful, innocent stuff from a bygone age.  My favourite bit was part of the denouement when one of the main opponents to J&W's schemes was disarmed thoroughly.  Being the leader of the Brown Trousers movement in England at the time (remember this was the 1920's or 1930's at the time of the Mosley Brown Shirts), this rascal was undone when Jeeves discovered his dark secret through his links at his butler's club.  Apparently he was a maker and purveyor of ladies underwear.  A succesful one too.  Bertie's comment was priceless:

"A chap can be a dictator or a seller of ladies underwear, but not both."

Bertie's wisdom is undeniable.  Wannabe dictators should take note.  

I met Jan early next morning at Euston and the others, the young guns, trickling along later.  We were booked on a lunchtime train and arrived in Manchester Piccadilly mid-afternoon for an interminable taxi ride to the accommodation… miles outside town and in fact nearer to the Man U ground than City's.  But this was a hotel specifically for football supporters so was served by many shuttles.

Pausing only to drop off our gear in the room, we headed straight out again for the stadium… another £25 taxi ride!  There didn't seem to be a downtown area in Manchester, but that could be my wrong perception and the route the taxi took but the City of Manchester or Etihad Stadium was nice.

The Crew L to R: My brother Jan, son Alex, friend Andy, son Ali, friend Matteo and yours truly 

This was built for the 2000 Olympic Games -- something that never happened, but it was used for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.  City moved in for the 2003 season.  Capacity is 47,000 but is about to be expanded to 62,000.

These days match day is all about the event… pre-match TV chat, bands, VIP section for the arriving demi-gods of football, special parking for the demi-gods Bentleys, Maseratis, Ferraris and he rest… So it was quite fun.

We found the Maine Road Chippy across the street for our fish and chip fix as well as Mary D's, the official supporters club pub further along the road.  The tension was building nicely.

With son, Alex, in the supporters' pub

My son Ali even found the Barcelona website masters who were interviewing City fans on the likely result and questions about Barca to see if they knew anything.  Ali nailed them all which I thought quite impressive!

Ali being interviewed by Barca TV

Our seats were nosebleed equivalents but that made them actually just right as it gave us the perfect panoramic view from above the centre circle.  Barca were pretty well supported too -- at least 5,000 out of the capacity crowd I estimated, all behind the goal to our left.

As for the game, well Barcelona did their tika-taka stuff for the first 15 minutes but then they lost the ball and City dominated the rest of the half.  What didn't help was a moment's inattention early in the 2nd half that saw Messi one on one with the goalkeeper only to be flattened inside the penalty area by a really, really dopey City defender.  Immediate red card and penalty.  So 1-0 down with 40 minutes remaining and only 10 men remaining.  Game over.

Barcelona scored another just before the final whistle which makes it really tough for the 2nd leg and quite a subdued band of young fans from Bermuda.

Bouncing back: Ali, Andy, Alex and Matteo

However they bounced back quickly and 4 of us headed off to Manchester's famous curry mile -- for what was unfortunately a pretty average curry at a place called Shere Khan -- whilst the other 2 headed off to party.

The stadium emptying out

And now the confession.

Now I don't gamble often.  Maybe some Crown & Anchor at Cup Match in Bermuda and some roulette in Las Vegas.  But nothing much else.  However whilst we were there, the boys laid their bets -- 3-0 in favour of City was a common bet -- and, well, you know how you get carried away some time?

So I put money on Barcelona.

To win 2-0.

Sorry guys.

I feel bad about this, really…

Brothers in arms